The thing with Malfoy, Rose found herself thinking as she feverishly
pulled on first her coat and then James' invisibility cloak, is not that I
dislike him so much as the fact that he's so irritating. Albus or James would
reason it's hereditary but I don't know...he was really quite all right until
that Valentine's Day incident last year – and why I am thinking about him when
I should be concentrating on what I'm going to do now is something I can't
figure out either.

She
had reached the cave – there was no one left outside, so she guessed everyone
had entered, including the fake George. Must remember to check on the real
Uncle George when this is over – no wait...he might be in real danger – what if
this woman has harmed him seriously to make sure he couldn't make it here? She
looked back, wondering which way to go. If she went to look for George and
something happened inside, she knew she'd feel she might have been able to do
something for them - on the other hand if she didn't go and something had happened
to her uncle, she'd never be able to forgive herself.

Rose
pursed her lips. She wasn't sure it was the right decision, but it felt like
the best one in the circumstances. She pulled out her wand from its holder in
her coat and fired a flare in the direction in which Scorpius had gone,
followed by two more. Sure enough, in a few minutes the blond boy was standing
before her and looking around, bemused. Rose slipped the invisibility cloak off
her head just enough to show her face.

“I
don't know either, but I don't have a choice. I want you to run to Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes as fast as you
possibly can. I think my Uncle George might be hurt – or worse. If he is,
please send for help.”

“I...sure...what's
going on, Rose?” he asked, in a serious tone.

“I
can't explain now, Malfoy, just go - run!” she whispered urgently, and then
slapped her forehead with her fist. “I'm an ass!”

Rose
didn't bother to respond – she pointed her wand past him and said, “Accio
broomstick!”

The
broomstick that the imposter had ridden flew from its hiding place and sped
towards them. Scorpius held out a hand and caught it with the ease of an expert.
Which he was, seeing as he played seeker for Slytherin’s Quidditch team.

“Wait
for me in the village,” she said, before pulling the cloak over her head again.

“I'll
call that a date, Rose,” said Scorpius, climbing onto the broomstick, “even if
you don't!”

Rose
thankfully had not heard the last remark. She ducked into the cave, wondering
whether it was large enough to fit the fifteen or so people she had seen
gathered outside. As it turned out, it was not. In fact there was no one in it
at the moment. Where the hell have they gotten to, Rose wondered, people
don't disappear into thin air like that, not even if they are the D.A. She
walked around the cave, treading carefully. There were rats and other debris
strewn around the floor, which she was careful to step around. It was as she
reached the leftmost corner that she found what she was looking for – a
well-concealed trapdoor. In fact, it would not even have been visible to most
people, but she and her friends had not spent a considerable amount of their
time exploring Hogwarts Castle for exactly similar entrances to secret
passageways without picking up a knack for locating them.

Not
every trapdoor opens in quite the same way – Rose knew that well. Thankfully,
she had picked up a nifty little spell from a book she had found at home for
just this sort of situation. “Nokaeteb Noxos” she whispered, pointing
her wand at the metallic hinge that jutted ever-so-slightly out of the stone
surface. The wall around the hinge glowed briefly, showing the outline of a
door, then the outline moved slowly to the right.

So it's a sliding door. Now how can a girl get in without the
folks inside noticing. Even an invisibility cloak can't get me through without
the movement of the door being pretty obvious. I'm sure Mom would have a spell
for this situation too. Probably could turn the stone into Jell-o or something
and slip through unnoticed. However, as was generally informed to her twice a week in school,
she was not her mother. Rose stepped gingerly around the door. The magical
outlines had now disappeared. She tried to press against the door to check if
she could hear anything, but as might have been expected, the door had been
soundproofed from within.

No way in. So much for all my efforts! she muttered, unless...

Thinking
almost too fast to quite comprehend what she was doing, Rose quickly drew her
wand and pointed it towards the ceiling of the cave. “Lumos,” she said
in a quiet tone, briefly lighting up the cave before she muttered the
counter-spell. Just as I'd hoped – icicles!

As
the cave darkened again, Rose pointed her wand straight towards the largest
growth of icicles – a bunch about four feet in length not far from the hidden
door that hung down like stalactites from the ceiling. Mustering up all her
concentration, she said, as loudly as she dared, “Sectumsempra.”

She
allowed herself a small smile as she felt the powerful spell course through her
arm and flow straight towards the cave's ceiling. She held the spell for not
more than a few seconds, but it was enough. She could hear the crack of the
cutting spell spread through the ice formation and shrank into herself as she
watched it crash to the floor below. She had wanted a distraction, and she had
got it. The sound reverberated through the cave for what felt like several
minutes. In fact, Rose wouldn't have been surprised if it had been heard in
Hogsmeade and neighbouring villages. When she finally took her hands off her
ears, she was duly rewarded by the sound of creaking hinges.

Rose
positioned herself flat against the wall near the gap that was opening up where
the door had been. Her father came out first, in a blaze of colour, followed by
Uncle Harry and Neville. All three had their wands drawn.

“Don't
see anything, mate,” said Ron.

“Over
there, on the floor,” said Harry.

They
walked past Rose towards the splinters of ice. Seizing her opportunity, she
slipped past the door unnoticed. There was a small passage, hardly six feet
long, which led to a rudimentary arch carved into the stone. Rose stepped
through the arch and found herself in a large room, well-lit by floating
torches similar to the floating candles in the Great Hall back at Hogwarts. The
room was longer than it was wide, with a long table at the centre. It wasn't a
round table, thankfully – for a moment, Rose wondered whether her family had
been trying to emulate King Arthur – in fact it was like a modern conference
table. As would be expected, the members of the D.A. were seated around it, all
evidently in a state of alertness. That noise I made outside must've really
got them thinking, she thought. Rose stealthily made her way closer to the
table, careful to tread lightly. The room was made of mostly roughly hewn rock
and there were a few dark niches here and there. She made straight for the one furthest
from her mother. She had no reason to believe that Hermione Granger included
seeing through invisibility cloaks amongst her many abilities, but there was no
point taking chances. Rose crept into a corner just behind a short blonde woman
whom she instantly recognised as her friend Martin's mother, Luna.

The
room continued quiet for a while, until Harry, Ron and Neville returned.

“Just
some icicles that fell outside,” said Harry with a shrug.

“Icicles?”
asked Hermione.

“Little
solid blocks of water that form on hard surfaces when the weather is cold. They
fall sometimes when the temperature begins to rise.” The completely superfluous
explanation came from the imposter version of George Weasley. Rose felt herself
flush. This woman or whatever she was had some cheek!

“Anyway,”
said Harry, as he walked back to the head of the table, “let's leave that aside
and get back to the reason I've convened the D.A. again.”

“Yes,
it's been so long, Harry – is it something serious?” The question came from
Parvati.

“Honestly,
mates – I don't know for sure yet. It may be, it may not, but my gut instinct
says I should be sharing this with you.” He took a look around the room. “Not
as many as we used to be, are we?”

“People
move on and move away from the things that they once found exciting, Harry. Not
everyone wants to always be saving the world,” Neville said quietly.

“Well,
that's besides the point – which I should be getting to, or you folks will be
throwing stuff at my head. I trust most of you are familiar with the name
Hernwig Hubstein?”

There
were nods all around the table. Rose herself felt that she had heard or seen
the name somewhere. On a book-cover back home, she recalled.

“Just
to recap,” continued Harry, “Mr. Hubstein was the German Minister for Magic –
or Chancellor or whatever they call them out there – until five years ago.
Prior to that, he was the Head of the Department for International Magical
Co-operation in his country. He's also famous for his research into Eastern
Magical traditions and forms and has published over a dozen books on the
subject, including Beastly Barbarian Savages of the East and Holy
Smoke! He's also very...dead.”

Rose
thought she saw the hint of a smile on Harry's face as the import of his words
sank in around the table. Always the showman, eh, Uncle Harry? she
questioned him mentally.

“It
happened about a week ago. You'll be wondering why it's not been splashed
around newspapers around the Wizarding world yet – my only answer is that the
German press is not as free as our own – in fact, Hubstein owned the three
biggest 'papers in the country and his lawyers are suppressing the story. Not
sure what they intend to achieve, given that the man was pretty scandalous
while alive, but there you have it.”

Harry
paused to take a drink of water. Rose contemplated her favourite uncle as he
raised the glass to his lips. He had not changed much from the photographs of
him from his student and “Battle of Hogwarts” days that she had seen so often.
His face was still youthful, his figure still on the thin side and his hair
still rather messy. He loved to laugh, often saying that if his days battling
Lord Voldemort had taught him anything, it was the importance of laughing
whenever you could. Aunt Ginny was different – more distant, somehow. Rose was
a little afraid of her, and slightly resented her for the patronising manner
she adopted when speaking to her father. She brought her mind back to bear on
the scene before her though, as Harry was resuming.

“He
died suddenly in his own dining room. He was discovered by his house-elf the
next morning. It was assumed to be an Avada Kedavra that did him in, as
the body seemed to show all the typical signs of an AK murder. Moreover, since
his mistress was missing, it was also assumed that she must have been the
murderess.”

“I
take it from your careful usage of the word 'assumed' that what you just said
was not actually what happened?” asked the imposter George.

“Well,
let's put it this way – when the German Auror department got in on the act,
they couldn't prove that was what it appeared to be. There wasn't the slightest
magical trace in the room. They interrogated the portraits and were informed
that he had been reading at the table when he suddenly went stiff and fell to
the ground. There was nobody else in the room at the time. That's when they
called me to come and see if I could make any better sense of it.”

“And
could you?” asked Parvati.

“I
think so. But to explain, I'll have to step back in time a bit. The thing is,
Ginny and I have known Hubstein for a while – had known him, I mean. We met at
a Ministry-sponsored event a few years after Voldemort's death. He was still
the Chancellor back then. I didn't particularly like him, but you have to be
polite to a Chancellor and when he invited us to visit his place we really
weren't in a position to refuse. About a year later we received a formal
invitation to spend a week with him at his winter getaway in the south of
France and so we sent the kids to stay with Ron and Hermione and took off.”

“It
was bloody awful,” Ginny took over, “I mean, the house was absolutely gorgeous,
it was obvious that the man had good taste and lots of money and knew how to
spend it, but it really got on our nerves after a while. He seemed to revel in
orgies and wild parties The place would fill with hordes of beautiful people
every night and Firewhiskey would flow like water. The next time around he
invited us to his home in Bonn – it was much later, almost five years after
that first time - it was quieter and a much nicer trip, overall. As you know,
he was also the foremost scholar of oriental magic and his library was a
treasure-trove of information.”

“That's
also when we met his then-mistress – Raylene her name was, if memory serves me
right, and she can't have been a day older than twenty-five. We visited him
three more times, and each time he had a different woman whom he introduced as
his 'special friend' – each one seemingly younger than the last one,” Harry
said, beginning to walk around the table towards where Neville was sitting.
“Not something we thought very highly about, but that was his choice and it
wasn't really our place to comment on it. He was hospitable enough and as Ginny
pointed out, his knowledge of the different streams of magic was formidable and
if one overlooked his libertine ways, he was not a bad sort of chap. It was a
bit of a shock when I got a call from my counterpart in Germany saying the old
man was dead – he must've been in his seventies but he'd always seemed terribly
alive.”

“Why
wouldn't he feel that way, given the fact that he was cavorting with women old
enough to be his grand-daughters?” Ginny smiled sardonically.

“Anyway,
I went over last Saturday. Checked out the scene of the death and all that. It
was as they said – no sign of magic having been performed. His own wand showed
that the last spell he had cast had been to cool his glass of wine. There was
no trace of the trophy mistress either. She seemed to have disappeared as well
– so it was pretty reasonable to assume that she was responsible, but we just
couldn't figure out how she had done it.”

“That's
right – assume it's the mistress who did it!” said Luna Lovegood.

“Circumstantial
evidence, Luna,” said Harry with a good-natured smile. “For a couple of days we
continued looking around the house to see if anything was missing to indicate
the motive and speaking to Hubstein's friends to know whether they knew of any
reason why the girlfriend should have killed him. No one seemed to have an
idea. We had neither motive nor a murder method – until, that is, I happened to
speak to an old friend of mine who supplied me the answers I needed.”

Neville
smiled.

“Harry
flatters me, really. It wasn't me who got him on the right track – in fact it
wasn't an old friend of Harry's at all. It was an old enemy. Does anyone here
remember Professor Snape?”Next Chapter

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About Me

Percy Slacker was bitten by Schrodinger’s Cat as a child, and has since then combined a deep fear of cats with an
abiding conviction that he both exists and does not exist at the same
time. This existential doubt has led him
to grow up to be a writer while not actually being a writer.

He lives in Mumbai with his family, his book collection and a firm
conviction that modern civilization is in an interminable decline.